“We need to bring one immediately, wait a few months, bring another one and once those people get up and running we’ll keep adding,” Jones said. “Our goal was to hire four new officers and put one on the Butler County Drug Task Force to really focus on dealing with the drugs in the area.”
The city’s location between Hamilton and Middletown has made it a hot spot for illegal drug activity, Police Chief Arthur Scott previously told the Journal-News.
“We’re kind of a fire zone here between Middletown and Hamilton,” Scott said in January. “And obviously a lot of things happen between the two. We’re in the middle so a lot of things pass through here we don’t have the capacity to deal with.”
Some of the $897,000 generated by the levy would also replace or upgrade equipment like police cruisers, some of which are more than 10 years old.
If voters approve the measure, it will cost the owner of a $100,000 home about 50 cents a day or roughly $180 a year, according to Scott.
Jones is often asked how much it costs to fund a new officer, he said.
“If you ask any law enforcement agency they’ll all tell you the same thing,” he said. “It costs about $100,000 total if you include benefits, workers comp and all the equipment ...”
State budget cuts have lowered the city’s general fund by almost $200,000 per year, Jones said. There are 13 people on the police force serving the city’s population of 12,500, including the chief, he said. That’s down from 17 people a decade ago when there were about 4,500 fewer people to protect. The city’s annual police budget is $1.8 million.
Scott has been putting information about the levy on Facebook. Some responses from residents have called for the city to cut the fat from its budget first.
But Jones said that has been done for the past five years, and there is no more to cut. That’s one of the reasons, he said, that the city is seeking a permanent police levy, rather than one that is renewable every few years.
“The problem is if you do a levy and you pass it and it’s for say five years, and you hire four officers and get new equipment and five years from now it doesn’t pass, those quality officers you invested the last five years in, now you’ve got to let them go because you can’t afford them,” Jones told the Journal-News in January.
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